Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has again slammed western countries and the U.S for catalyzing the war between Russia and Ukrain.
Since launching a Special Military Operation in Ukraine that in February year year with an aim of demilitarizing Ukraine in order not to threaten Russia’s security, to protecting the people of Donetsk and Lugansk Republics, and to denazify Ukraine, Russia has unfairly been greeted with tough sanctions by the West and the U.S.
Putin, on Tuesday, accused the United States of America (U.S) of establishing several military bases abroad more than any other country in the world.
“I would like to stress –in fact, this is well-known – that no other country has so many military bases abroad as the United States. There are hundreds of them – I want to emphasize this – hundreds of bases all over the world; the planet is covered with them, and one look at the map is enough to see this,” Putin said.
The Moscow leader said it was necessary to protect Russia’s historical lands and eliminate the threat emanating from the neo-Nazi regime that had taken hold of Ukraine after 2014 coup.
“One year ago, to protect the people in our historical lands, to ensure the security of our country and to eliminate the threat coming from the neo-Nazi regime that had taken hold in Ukraine after the 2014 coup, it was decided to begin the special military operation. Step by step, carefully and consistently we will deal with the tasks we have at hand,” said Putin.
President Putin said that the West realized it was impossible to “defeat Russia on the battlefield” and are conducting increasingly “aggressive information attacks against us” targeting primarily the younger generation.
According to Putin, the people Donbass have since 2014 been fighting for the right to live in their land and to speak their native tongue, and waited for Russia’s rescue from Kiev regime’s overt hatred.
He said that despite Russia doing everything to peacefully solve the devastating conflict, the “West had a different plan for us.”
“They behaved just as shamelessly and duplicitously when destroying Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. The concepts of honor, trust, and decency are not for them, Putin said.
Putin accused the West for their colonialism, dictate and hegemony mentality, adding: “they got used to being allowed everything, and spitting on the whole world.”
Putin contended that the treat people living in their own countries with the same disdain, like a master while tricking them with “tall stories about the search for peace” about adherence to the UN Security Council resolutions on Donbass.
“Indeed, the Western elites have become a symbol of total, unprincipled lies,” he noted.
Responding to ceasefire concerns, Putin said: “We were open and sincerely ready for a constructive dialogue with the West; we said and insisted that both Europe and the whole world needed an indivisible security system equal for all countries, and for many years, we suggested that our partners discuss this idea together and work on its implementation. But in response, we received either an indistinct or hypocritical reaction, as far as words were concerned.”
“But there were also actions: NATO’s expansion to our borders, the creation of new deployment areas for missile defence in Europe and Asia – they decided to take cover from us under an ‘umbrella’ – deployment of military contingents, and not just near Russia’s borders,” he added.
Putin said that in December 2021, Russia officially submitted draft agreements on security guarantees to the USA and NATO but all fundamental points were rejected which prompted the go-ahead for the implementation of aggressive plans and they were not going to stop.
Judging by the information Moscow received, the president said “there was no doubt that everything would be in place by February 2022 for launching yet another bloody punitive operation” in Donbass.
He said although Kiev’s attach on Donbass in 2014 was at odds with the documents and resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council, “everyone pretended that nothing was happening.”
“In 2014, the Kiev regime sent its artillery, tanks and warplanes to fight in Donbass. We all remember the aerial footage of airstrikes targeting Donetsk. Other cities also suffered from airstrikes. In 2015, they tried to mount a frontal assault against Donbass again, while keeping the blockade in place and continuing to shell and terrorize civilians.”
“Let me reiterate that they were the ones who started this war, while we used force and are using it to stop the war,” Putin said, adding that “those who plotted a new attack against Donetsk in the Donbass region, and against Lugansk understood that Crimea and Sevastopol would be the next target.”
He said Russia is defending human lives and common home, while the West seeks unlimited power. Putin argued that the West has already spent over $150 billion on helping and arming the Kiev regime, as compared to the G7 countries’ $60 billion expenditure in 2020–2021 to help the world’s poorest countries.
“They spent $150 billion on the war, while giving $60 billion to the poorest countries, despite pretending to care about them all the time, and also conditioning this support on obedience on behalf of the beneficiary countries,” said Putin.
“Meanwhile, they keep channeling more money into the war effort. They eagerly invest in sowing unrest and encouraging government coups in other countries around the world,” he added.
Putin argued that the recent Munich Conference turned into “an endless stream of accusations against Russia”, and was done so that everyone would forget what the “so-called West” has been doing over the past decades.
“They were the ones who let the genie out of the bottle, plunging entire regions into chaos,” Putin said.
“According to US experts, almost 900,000 people were killed during wars unleashed by the United States after 2001, and over 38 million became refugees. Please note, we did not invent these statistics; it is the Americans who are providing them. They are now simply trying to erase all this from the memory of humankind, and they are pretending that all this never happened. However, no one in the world has forgotten this or will ever forget it,” he added.
Putin accused U.S of robbing “everyone under the guise of democracy and freedoms, to impose neoliberal and essentially totalitarian values, to brand entire countries and nations, to publicly insult their leaders, to suppress dissent in their own countries” and to divert attention from corruption scandals by creating an enemy image.
He recollected: “I would like to recall that, in the 1930s, the West had virtually paved the way to power for the Nazis in Germany. In our time, they started turning Ukraine into an anti-Russia.”
He said “this project” dates back to the 19th century when the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Poland had conceived it for one purpose to deprive Russia of its historical territories that are now called Ukraine. “This is their goal. There is nothing new here; they are repeating everything,” he said.
Putin contended that the West expedited the “implementation of this project today” by supporting the 2014 coup that was bloody, anti-state and unconstitutional.
“They pretended that nothing happened, and that this is how things should be. They even said how much money they had spent on it. Russophobia and extremely aggressive nationalism formed its ideological foundation,” said Putin.
Putin revealed that the anti-Russia project is part of the revanchist policy towards Russia to create flashpoints of instability and conflicts next to its borders.
“We are not at war with the people of Ukraine. I have made that clear many times. The people of Ukraine have become hostages of the Kiev regime and its Western handlers, who have in fact occupied that country in the political, military and economic sense and have been destroying Ukrainian industry for decades now as they plundered its natural resources,” Putin said.
“Nobody was thinking about people, who were conditioned for slaughter and eventually became expendables. It is a sad and dreadful thing to say, but it is a fact. The current Ukrainian regime is serving not national interests, but the interests of third countries,” he added.
Putin accused the West of using Ukraine as a battering ram and testing range against Russia.
“I am not going to discuss in detail the West’s attempts to turn the war around, or their plans to ramp up military supplies, since everyone is well aware of that. However, there is one circumstance that everyone should be clear about: the longer the range of the Western systems that will be supplied to Ukraine, the further we will have to move the threat away from our borders. This is obvious,” he said.
The Moscow leader said the Western elite make no secret of their goal, and “they plan to finish us once and for all, but we will respond accordingly, because this represents an existential threat to our country.”
Putin said that the West realized it was impossible to “defeat Russia on the battlefield” and are conducting increasingly “aggressive information attacks against us” targeting primarily the younger generation.
Russia launched its well-planned special military operation in Ukraine on 20 February 2014 with the military operation of its armed forces on seizing parts of the country.